Everywhere I look there are people advocating for defederation from this and that! Do you even understand what you're suggesting? Do you get what's the point of decentralized social media and activity pub?

This is supposed to be free and accessible for everyone. We all have brains and can decide who to interact with.

If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it's just natural that people tend to use it. I won't use it, you may not use it and it's totally fine! It's about having options. Also as Mastodon's CEO pointed out there's no privacy concern, everything stays on your instance.

Edit: after reading and responding to many comments, I should point out that I'm not against defederation in general. It's a great feature if used properly. Problem is General Instances with open sign-ups and tens of thousands of users making decisions on par of users and deciding what they can and can not see.

If you have a niche or small community with shared and agreed upon values, defederating can be great. But I believe individual users are intelligent enough to choose.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If meta or any other company manages to create a better product it’s just natural that people tend to use it. ... It’s about having options

We can't rely on the illusion of an even playing field to limit the influence of predatory capital like zukerberg's. Big social media products are designed around the chemistry of decision making in the brain - they can win using an inferior, exploitative product with the worst user experience that could possibly bear profits.

I'm not necessarily in favor of defed-ing anything that zuck's claws are in, but I think it's very important to be wary of what opening the door for one of the world's most genocide-encouraging social media companies could mean.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You know what else is designed around “the chemistry of decision-making in the brain”?

Every attempt at persuasion. All debate, marketing, art, seduction, all of it.

The brain makes decisions via chemistry.

As one of my favorite psych professors always likes to say: “The question isn’t why people do cocaine. That’s completely obvious. The question is why doesn’t everybody do cocaine all day every day.”

And his answer to that question is that there are higher-order patterns which can exert even more powerful decision-making influence than dopaminergic drugs. The thing is, those patterns are called “meaning” and they’re nicely aligned with personal health and happiness.

Cocaine hacks the brain. Meaning uses it.

I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that a person can cultivate the ability to tell when they’re being fed short term dopamine hits, and I think it’s better if we try to develop the ability to say no to cocaine (via developing the reason no to) rather than trying to create a cocaine-free environment.